I feel like most supercollider tutorials touch the same sound design topics, like the basics of different kinds of synthesis, but it seems they are always with the purpose of teaching supercollider itself. Also these tutorials give examples of effects, but they dont explain the theory behind them, or how to fine tune them. I need material that focuses on the novice/intermediate levels of sound design, and explains the theory behind it, but still doesnt stray too far away from audio programming. What material has helped you alot in improving your sound designing skills in supercollider?
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Thatâs sort of a big question.
Itâs a bit hard to gauge what intermediate level means.
That could mean âI understand subtractive synthesis but Iâve never encountered FM.â
Or maybe âI know what a filter is but not how it actually worksâ (thereâs a whole can of worms)
What have you tried and what are you interested in? I would agree with your observation regarding the tutorials though. Iâm glad I came into supercollider with a pretty solid understanding of synthesis. I gave up when I first tried to learn it because I didnât understand synthesis and it was too much for me to try to wrap my head around both SC and synthesis.
This might be a bit too basic but itâs a really helpful resource:
https://learningsynths.ableton.com/
I think that doing sound design in VCV is great too because all you need to do is add a module and play around with it. It takes a lot less time to make an idea happen there.
Yeah youre right about the vagueness of my question. Its hard to say where i am exactly at. I would say i understand sound design past the level most supercollider tutorials cover. Thanks for the tips. I never thought actually of learning sound design outside of supercollider. I wonder how many people here do this, because it takes more time to get things done in supercollider.
Ive come across this channel already i see, didnt know it was yours 
Iâd encourage you to look at https://vcvrack.com/
Thatâs how I learned synthesis. I commend your patience trying to learn supercollider as a means of learning synthesis because both can be really abstract. VCV is really nice to play around with, especially since things like feedback loops are far easier in VCV. SuperCollider is nasty when it comes to feedback but VCV does the buffer allocation very much in the background so all you have to do is click and drag the patch cords.
Plus you can drown yourself in free libraries. yes you can get latency and glitchy audio, but itâs honestly just a matter of how you use it and you can do the same thing in supercollider. Iâve seen lots of people do that on the forums. Like i usually donât get above 14% but some people might be running multithread processes.
The analog modeling in VCV is a lot better than SC (because SC isnât meant to do that) and it looks nice too.
Definitely dig into that if youâre not familiar with it and itâll get you up and going in no time.
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I think one reason for the original question is that DSP is the same everywhere.
So itâs really learning two languages at the same time â signal processing, and how to express that in SC.
Writing tutorials is a lot of work. So, if youâre authoring tutorials, you want as wide coverage as possible. DSP theory is a pretty wide area (usable in many environments). SC programming is probably less wide, but thereâs enough to talk about that authors might not want to get âsidetrackedâ with DSP concepts that can be learned in other places.
The intersection of the signal processing and SC areas is a lot smaller, making it perhaps a less attractive niche.
In that sense, I agree with the other suggestions here. When you understand, for instance, conventional synth design (oscillator â filter â envelope-controlled amplifier), then the question is not âsound design in SCâ but rather âWhat are my options for oscillators in SC? For filters?â etc.
Or a basic phase-modulation formula, e.g.
var mod = SomeKindOfOscillator.ar(freq * ratio) * index;
var phase = Phasor.ar(0, freq * SampleDur.ir, 0, 1) * 2pi;
var carrier = OscWithAPhaseInput.ar(0, phase + mod);
⌠which, admittedly, it takes some sophistication to come up with on oneâs own (and itâs a gaping hole in SCâs documentation, that we donât provide some of these formulas).
Couple of hints for you going forward:
- There are not that many synthesis techniques, and they donât change from one environment to the next.
- What makes synthesis really interesting is parameter modulation. I spend at least 2 weeks on this in my Pure Data course (and students still struggle with it). Youâll have to get familiar with this because e.g. VCV Rack handles the modulation mapping for you, while SC doesnât.
- Each parameter has a baseline, set value.
- Assume a modulation signal that is either -1 ⌠1 or 0 ⌠1.
- There is a modulation width.
- Then the modulated signal is:
- Linear style:
(width * mod) + baseline - Exponential style:
(width ** mod) * baselineâ note the similarity between these! - E.g., a 0 ⌠1 envelope applied to frequency would be exponential.
(semitones.midiratio ** envelope) * freq.
- Linear style:
- And done.
Also â an incredibly useful resource is the Synth Secrets series, which someone compiled into a PDF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12SM0SAOvMq166gc8B1b81Y_S7HPym3Iy
hjh
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Thanks for the hints and also the synth secrets!
For the other part you were saying: i get what you mean, but i do want to get deeper in to sound design (and try to implement the things ive learned in supercollider), rather than getting deeper into supercollider perse. You see, i want answers to questions like: how do you make a snare sound without it sounding to brushy, how do you make a good chorus, how do you implement a lexicon type reverb. Things like that, but maybe a little bit more general. You might say well what is a good sound is subjective, so you have to explore for yourself. But i would maybe try to compare it to classical music. There one learns different kind of chord progressions, harmony, techniques, or rather conventions which are generally accepted as âgood soundingâ. And im asking here what you guys have done to get so far.
The whole channel is a great resource of intermediate sound design concepts implemented in SC.
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Synth Secrets. Itâs free, and deeper and more thorough than you would expect for a non-academic magazine. E.g., two chapters on snare synthesis, beginning with spectral analysis and resynthesis and ending with models of famous drum machines â itâs way beyond âbandpassed noise.â
https://drive.google.com/open?id=12SM0SAOvMq166gc8B1b81Y_S7HPym3Iy
It wonât teach you SC but a/ it is about exactly the types of questions youâre asking and b/ if you learn the concepts and then apply them in SC, I think itâs a deeper level of understanding than learning them in SC (because you could take the concepts and use them in Max/Pd or Reaktor or wherever â but if you only learn SC formulas for them, you might not really understand the concepts and get stuck if you have to translate to another environment).
hjh
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Your channel and blog are so good!
I just wondering where to keep information to learn pure sound design not exclusively related to sc, Video tutorials, manuals, recipes, online schools, expert professional sounddesigner/ composer, electroacustic musicians?
Or by reverse engineering synth presets?
Or by reverse engineering the tools used, perhaps made in other languagesâŚ
Even just to practice fine tuning.
it would be also interesting to practice with multiple sounds at the same time, to learn a bit about mixing.
Then movement of the parts, and crazy automation of the whole.
Once all these steps have been done, it would be interesting to take the synthdefs and explore them with generative systems⌠through other techniques, granulation etcâŚ
and also post processing with effects and automations!
Of course it would be nice to learn much more âexperimentalâ synthesis, gendy, concatenative etcâŚ
I feel like looking for the âneedle in the haystackâ makes me lose the big picture.
Am I the only one?
At the begininng I was hoping to find a way to sound âoriginalâ! and I liked a lot the super clean sound of sc compared to everything else I heard around, even more âsurgicalâ and malleable.
I remember the first times listening to this album and thinking â how is possible to make such a crazy and malleable music ?!
anyway
If you guys have advices about those topics, you are welcome!
Ps: I studied electroacoustic music for 5 years in Italy, but I feel I have many many gaps
For instance I would love to learn some of these presets, just to start, because honestly Iâm not able to make sound like that⌠even if to my ears they sound âflat, without saltâ but correct and pleasant!
forgive the outburstâŚ
Read
Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls. by Allen Strange. I think that is the best synthesis book ever written. Cause it covers the basics so well.
Yes, also SOS articles. They should make it into a book.
This is maybe the one piece of advice I wish a younger me had, starting out with sound design.
The technology is just a means to an end!
As interesting and, sometimes, inspiring as technology may be in itself, the goal is shaping a spectrum over time in response to an expression.
It might be an over simplification. But approaching any synthesis method with this in mind, helps understand why things are the way they are. Knowing this, it becomes clear that the choice of oscillator waveform determines the amount and distribution of overtones and that a low pass filter will reduce overtones. It makes clear that the amount of modulator signal in FM synthesis determines the amount of overtones. Etc. sure, there is a lot more nuance and control to be learned, but just knowing this helps me understand and tame any synth.
A spectrometer is very helpful, both for understanding sounds to emulate and for understanding how a chosen synthesis method shapes its output. Fortunately supercollider has a spectrometer built in.
As a bonus, understanding the spectral composition of sounds allows for better audio engineering. It helps understanding where spectral content intersects, cancels out or can be emphasized by layering, distorting or filtering.
Once you understand spectrum, learn about time. Delay, phaser, envelopes, chorus, reverb. It is all about time. How long sound needs to travel in a room, how long it needs to bounce back, how long a wave has to be for cancellation and so on. It is just about time. Time determines rythm. Time makes music out of sound.
The other piece of advice is that sound design is a broad field. I know guys working in foley for film and games industry, they suck at synth sound design. I know music producers, who create crazy good sounds for their production, yet they would never make it into an instrument library. There is a difference in shaping a piece of sound for a special situation, a sound that only needs to work as a one shot, a sound that illustrates the action in response to a game players input or a sound that is supposed to react to expressive control by an instrumentalist.
Sounds that need to be musical, do not require complexity. A nice example would be a minimoog lead sound or stylophone, it canât get any simpler. On the other hand, no matter how complex a sound is, any noise can become musical through rhythmic repetition.
The last advice I would give to my former self is, you will never stop learning. At some point you will discover, that a pumpkin with a string on a stick can be a deeper sound source to explore than many synths out there.
@jamshark70 the Google docs link is broken. Would love to take a look at the pdf.
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The Allen strange book covers all that. I wouldnât say a minimoog lead is simple though. What goes into the mini is the huge electricity in a living system, why does it sound so different than a Ugen? Iâve owned a mini and played with a lot of softstnths and they donât come close. But that is a can of worms. I hope the future is actual virtual instruments. Iâm sure Iâm wrong , and will get told Iâve got it upside down. I just use my ears. Iâm not a scientist
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That would be my number one recommendation !
Especially as you already have a solid background in the field.
Sure, all the technical stuff and the standard techniques are the necessary starting point. Without that, itâs a flight in the dark. But when it comes to the artistic usage, everything relies on the individual aesthetic judgement, which is embedded in the much broader context of culture and history.
Iâve recently collected some thoughts on that topic:
Iâd also like to point to the upcoming Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024 organized by colleagues from IEM Graz (September 26 - 28).
The program is already online:
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What at one point was just found in the avantgarde is just basic mainstream in pop music nowadays.
Youtube is full of exquisite tutorials on experimental sound design with just ableton stock plugins.
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Who actually coined the term âspeculative synthesisâ, seems to be a thing at academia atm, or? Can you give a brief explanation what is ment by that, all the explanations i have found have been really cryptic? The program looks interesting I had the first encounter with speculative realism while reading this Urbanomic Speculative Solution: Conversation with Quentin Meillassoux and Florian Hecker and Urbanomic Speculative Aesthetics and Merve â Ray Brassier: Realismus Jetzt, Spekulative Philosophie und Metaphysik fĂźr das 21. Jahrhundert
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Itâs the name of the research project which the symposium is part of.
I assume the colleagues invented that term, though I have not investigated the whole history and possible connections to certain philosophical schools you are citing. I see the project in the tradition of non-standard synthesis which I mentioned in my article linked above. There have been other terms floating around: Errant Sound Synthesis (Nick Collins), Heretical Sound Synthesis (Andrew Bentley, Alejandro Olarte), and Unorthodox Sound Synthesis (the name of my course).
What these initiatives seem to have in common â from my perspective â is an opposition to regard sound synthesis as a canonical âHow-To-Doâ subject. This consideration has probably been around ever since â think of people like Don Buchla and Iannis Xenakis, who were active in very different spheres. The rise of Artistic Research, to which many art education institutions have committed themselves, has been supportive, too, but the questions originate from the technological possibilities and their artistic usage.
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im happy that you call it a âcanonical-how-to-subjectâ. Beside all the hands on possiblities you get while investigating well implemented stock plugins, you are pushed into a certain area on how to approach making music. I think what Ableton has to offer especially with its recent update to version 12 and its MIDI capabilities is amazing, but it leads people to a certain direction in making music. But beside all that, alot of really good sound design comes from people using these tools.
An issue I often have to do with digital synthesis/composition is to do with the process of what Daniel calls system 2 sometimes feeling cold and uninspiring compared with say turning knobs and patching a modular synth. But also using a computer to simulate patching an analog synth feels like a pale imitation, also uninspiring. Those moments when working with the computer feels alive and fresh are what keep me going⌠And this usually has to do with process as well as result. One thing I find really cool about SC community is how different everyoneâs process is despite/because we all use code as our primary interface. Nathanâs process is always really good for me to see because it reminds me of how expressive direct vanilla coding in the IDE can be, if practiced like an instrument â also the Reflectives tutorials, for a totally different approach.
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